A Remote Sensing Undergraduate Research Internship in a Geoscience Workforce Program for Underrepresented Stem Students

For one year, underrepresented minority students majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) were engaged in a rigorous geoscience program that trained and equipped them with basic geoscience knowledge and geoscience workforce skills that adequately prepared them for entry level geoscience career building positions. Preliminary results from this young program with its small sample size (with a sample size of 10, caution should be exercised in generalizing these results) are extremely encouraging; They show that the program's geoscience remote sensing research internship produced significant student gains in a variety of remote sensing skills that range from interpreting, manipulating, and analyzing remote sensing data to conducting and presenting remote sensing research. Some of these students have also now joined the geoscience workforce as interns.